Ice Cube: War & Peace Vol. 2 (The Peace Disc) : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

"I started this gangsta shit," says Ice Cube at the opening of War and Peace Vol. 2, "and this the motherfuckin' thanks I get?" We've heard similar whines from dozens of platinum rappers, but few would begrudge Ice Cube his righteous fury. It sucks being an elder statesman at thirty (even if you're also a Young Turk movie producer). War and Peace Vol. 2, an improvement on 1998's scattershot Vol. 1, makes an argument for Cube's longevity. Few other MCs feature madly recontextualized Shakespearean verse, as Cube does on "Pimp Homeo." Cube also shows his flair for drama on the cinematic, post-apocalyptic rant of "Mental Warfare," an intro to the unrepentantly pro-gangsta "24 Mo' Hours." There are fresh departures here, too: On the single "Until We Rich" (which features Krayzie Bone), Cube imbues his old-school rhyming with a contemporary R&B flavor and a defiant optimism: "Don't talk about death/I got too much life to live." In a line like that, we see the badass spiritual resiliency that made Cube so worth imitating in the first place.